By JACK MANGROVE
High winds keep anglers in the river.
With the blustery conditions last weekend, most anglers opted for the river as the best choice to fuel their fishing addiction.
The Noosa River is one of those great systems where there is always a place to get out of the wind. Starting down towards the mouth, anglers were able to put in some big casts with the wind at their backs, trevally tailor and larger bream were all taken over the weekend from the rocks.
The dog beach was another great option with whiting the targeted species. Worm, yabbies, squid and prawns were all baits of choice. For the lure anglers, lightweight poppers and surface walkers were also popular. Woods Bays have been really firing, those that fished in the early morning were rewarded with trevally and tailor feeding in the upper section of the water column, lightly weighted baits of pilchards and fresh mullet strips were responsible for some great captures. Around the back of the Noosa Sound and in Weyba Creek the flathead have been on the chew. Soft plastic are the go and brighter colours seem to be the better option. Upriver has also been the domain of the flathead as well as smaller school-sized jew. Look for those deeper holes if you are chasing jew, larger paddle vibes have been working well.
Before we saw the increase in the wind speed last weekend, the offshore scene was going off. Sunshine reef has been really firing with a multitude of fish taken from the reef as well as pelagic activity. The reef produced grass sweetlip, pearl perch, brown line sea perch, venus tusk fish and some nice coral trout, while the pelagics were also in play with good spanish mackerel and tuna in the mix. Chardons Reef has also been fishing well with sweetlip, moses perch, tuskies, and some nice jewies coming from the bottom. North Reef also fired in the earlier part of last week with some great mackerel activity. With the wind speed set to drop over this weekend, I am sure that angler will make the best of the balmy autumn conditions. For the smaller craft, I would be heading for those closer reefs. Make sure you have plenty of smaller slugs as the pelagic are feeding on smaller bait fish at the moment. For those heading a little further afield, live baits and pilchard floaters have been the go to method.
On the beaches, things have been a little tough, anglers that are up early have been able to get in a couple of hours in before the wind picks up for the day. Dart have been prolific along the beaches and have been eating everything from worms, squid, and any type of strip bait. For those that have got a bait past the dart, some quality winter bream are starting to show up. Down around the Coolum area a couple of big jew have been taken with a 15kg fish land earlier last week.
So on behalf of Jack Mangrove, best of luck on your fishing adventures.
